Andyjr1515

And............STOP This is OK as the final coat of the top Any more and I will wreck it and have to start the process all over again (and ask me how I know that! ) So this will now sit somewhere safe for a week, to harden off enough for me to start installing the pickups and electrics. And then we just have to wait for lockdown to lift enough to be able to meet @Jus Lukin halfway to pass it across So, in the best broadcasting tradition, "This time next week, pop back to see the progress with another thrilling instalment of 'It's a bass, Jim'. And coming up over on our other channel, follow Andyjr1515's trials and tribulations in 'A Very Special Save..' where Andy is preparing to get his rags dirty!"

...and this is where many of the 'old hands' started. Certainly it is where I did. We are in a bit of a 'golden age' of guitars and basses where, often, the main functional differentiation between entry level instruments and many prop-quality ones are the hardware and electrics. The build and finish quality of the modern HB/ Epiphone / Squier /etc / etc basses and guitars is stunning at any level...but on an 'at the price' level, they are off the scale

OK - this looks a bit better than the 5mm gap in the middle that there was before The joints both sides are good with just a light run-down of the glue joint to do with a single-edged razor. Funnily enough, not to take any glue off, but to remove this teeny edge either side: Basically, fretboards shrink a touch when you iron them off...but actually often shrink over time in any case. Ever had fret ends get a bit sharp on a new bass after a year or so? That's the wood shrinking and leaving the fret ends exposed a teeny bit. With the heel end of the board flush, this looks at first glance like shrinkage of the length of the board but is actually just where sanding the neck surface flat prior to fixing the board has cut into the headstock / neck curve. This will have a touch of finish applied to colour match: The adjuster, although smaller than the original, remains in the right position for access for the allen key via the body recess: So a tidy up of the edges, a final levelling and re-treatment of the fretboard, cutting of a new nut (the original didn't like being removed) and we can get this back to @Raslee

Based on the number of scars on my fingers, I'm not sure I still do! This is great! I'm a big fan of Harley Bentons and you've done this one proud, @Mutley Splendid job.

Well, it seemed a waste of overnight glue curing time not to mask it, glue it and clamp it this evening: And yes - you can NEVER have too many clamps (or cauls, for that matter ) Fingers crossed!

Next steps were to put some packing strip in the bottom of the original trussrod slot to level it out from its original curved single-action rod rout, then put in the new two-way rod and finally fit and plane level a piece of binding strip to act as a truss-rod cap: ...and that means that the next job is re-fitting the fretboard Which, all being well with be tomorrow.

For polyurethane varnish finishes, nowadays, I use an artist's watercolour fan brush. In the case of Tru-oil, if I am going for gloss I wipe it on with a decent-quality lint-free cloth. In both cases, the final coat is determined by when 'that's it - STOP!' rather than the number of coats. And sometimes that's very quick and sometimes that is multiple 'flatten it, add a coat, add a final coat' cycles. I also tend to apply the finish 'back and sides' then, when it's dry, 'top and sides' And the second coat of 'back and sides' went on extremely well - and my experience says I should STOP on that before I try another coat...and wreck it Here it is: The top, on the other hand, is getting there but still needs a few more (or many more) cycles: But, overall, so far so good

Sounds OK to me. You say they are different inserts to your normal ones - it sounds like the threads were trying to push their way through the wood rather than cutting their way through?

Yes - that's going to work OK. Probably a couple more coats over the next day or two and then it will harden over the next couple of weeks. A few days after the final coat and it will be hard enough for me to start sorting out the installation of the electrics, etc..

The neck will stay satiny, organic, slurry and buffed for that playing feel that few other finishes quite achieve. But for the body, of the choice between the same, or a Tru-oil medium gloss, or a polyurethane full gloss, @Jus Lukin is opting for the tru-oil gloss. It's a nice finish - the gloss element brings out more of the wood figuring while retaining the 'real wood' look, but tru-oil done this way tends to settle down to a softer medium gloss after a few months - think 1960's Les Paul nitro. It is actually great for a shape like this with a passing nod to a 70's Alembic This is the first coat. See what I mean about it bringing out the beauty in the wood

The carbon rods arrived. 4mmx4mm box section - light as a feather and very strong! A bit of tidying up of the slots to make sure they fully seated: Then a liberal application of Z-poxy and a clamp to a flat surface, using wooden radius blocks to protect the neck from the clamps: And a quick check to make sure that both edges are fully flat with the tabletop (no - it's OK...it's not MrsAndyjr1515's favourite dining table . Mind you, it IS MrsAndyjr1515's clingfilm ) while the epoxy fully cures:

You could go one further and have two colours in EACH

Awe-inspiring

A bit like with finishing, ask 100 guitar or bass builders how they level frets and you'll get 100 different answers. For what it's worth, this is broadly how I do it. After checking that the neck itself is a flat as it can be, I level the frets with an aluminium beam with some fine emery cloth stuck to the back. And yes - I'm outside. And yes - it's SUNNY!!!! Yes - in the UK!!!!!!! : Basically, I'm taking the tops off any high frets so that the beam sits on the tops of all of the frets. I have to say, with this being a flat fretboard, it is easier to keep it all even across the width of the board than with a radiused board! But once this is done, the tops of a number of frets are now flat - and so have to be re-crowned so that you end up with the point contact with the string that you need for accurate fretting. You can see how wide this flat portion can be with my sharpie-mark: I tend to use a variety of crowning files - though generally I find the little Chris Alsop diamond ones with the wooden handles the best but the three-sided diamond one (I think Tonetech?) is also pretty good. The worst - ironically - are the most expensive...the Hoscoe non-diamond ones. Their nut files are expensive but great, but their crowning files IMHO are, well, just expensive . In this picture the frets been rough shaped and the above sharpie lines are now teeny thin lines along the top as the fret crowns have been re-established: So the frets are now back to the right shape - but they need the scratch marks taking out. Again, there are many ways of doing this but I generally take one of the Chris Alsop files and use them as a former for a series of progressively finer grit papers or cloths wrapped round, specifically 400 emery; 800 emery; 3600/6000/8000/12000 micro-mesh cloths : Which has done my poor old arthritic hands a power of no good...but it has done wonders for the frets. And I suppose they do say, 'Get rid of the old...make way for the young' The stain should be with me in the next couple of days so, soon, the final finishing process can start

Remember those shots of Saturn 5...

And - to my admitted great surprise - it worked! Here's the first run with the binding spacer in place: And here it is after the spacer has been removed and I've repeated it on the other side. Mathematics says that there would be a 0.4mm sliver in the middle - which there was. It just needed a sprape down the slot with a narrow chisel and all was cleaned up waiting the two rods that should be arriving in the next couple of days. Then we can get the fretboard back on Oh, and to prove that more experience doesn't eliminate whoopsies - see the little line on the left of the above photo near the top? That's what happens when the distance clamping screw loosens from the vibration as you're cutting the slot: It's only 2mm deep and it didn't go very far - but in that I could actually feel something change and stopped immediately, that cut happened in an instant. And normally with routers (especially the big ones) you can't see what's happening and can't hear or feel that something is amiss - and they have much bigger bits going much deeper... Did I ever mention that I hate routers Anyway - happily we're on the home straight with this one

If it works. Nutty - if it doesn't

So why is cutting the two 4mmx4mm slots such a challenge? Well, with a standard router, you have to fix the neck immovably and dead flat - and then you have to get the router itself to run in a dead straight path for half a meter with less than 0.2mm drift. And, unlike a Fender neck, the headstock on the Vox doesn't sit flat with the heel - so there are no convenient surfaces to put double-sided tape to stop the neck moving around (which, if it happened, would spell disaster). And you can't use clamps because they get in the way of the router Then, with a router table, you don't have to clamp the neck at all. BUT you would normally run the side of the neck along the table fence which gives you the dimensional accuracy...but then the headstock would hit the fence and move it a couple of inches...not good for the 'no more than 0.2mm drift' So enter the, probably, least used accessory that comes in some of the Dremel sets - the radius jig: Now, for cutting radii, 'precision' is emphatically not its middle name. But I'm not thinking of using it to cut a radius Add a spare strip of 2mm thick binding (in the picture above)...then fitting the Dremel with a decent quality and sharp 1.6mm router bit: Then inset the binding strip into the slot and run the router (keeping it square) up the slot, keeping firm pressure of the jig spike against the binding strip: ...gives me a 1.5mm slot parallel to the trussrod slot. Then removing the binding strip and repeating, this time running the jig spike along the side of the trussrod slot: ...gives me a slot 3.6mm wide - giving me, at worst, a modicum of inadvertent drift room or, at best, a small tidy up with a sharp chisel. Then turn it round and repeat on the other side. Might work

Although not much to show for it, in the background things are still progressing with this. At the moment, @Fishman and I are looking at colour options. I'm still experimenting, but this is a possible contender. Ignore the orbital sander 'snail trails' - on this test block, I'm just whacking it with a 60 grit disc to get to bare wood each time before trying the next colour. In the meantime, the fret slots at the edges of the board have been filled and sanded and the next couple of days will see the frets levelled and re-crowned

No...it means you must

Got it! It'll need to be tomorrow when I can take a photo to explain my mad plan...but I do indeed have a mad plan!

Good thought - I would need a variation on the theme because the 4mm bit I have won't take a bearing, but I see where you're coming from. The alternative I also thought was a tapered packer for the length of the neck with the outer edge ending up at the same width as the headstock all the way down. Then I would be able to run it along the router table fence in the normal way. It's a bit like your idea but upside down

I think that might be in the territory of 'too hard' If I can think of a reliable way of guiding it, then I suppose face down on the router table makes the most sense. But using the fence is tricky because the headstock gets in the way. I'm pondering on somehow getting some guide pegs that could sit in the truss rod slot...

Just checked with the straight edge and the bow has come back a touch, although only by about 0.5mm . That being said, as @HazBeen said earlier, it pays to sit on the cautious side and so I have ordered a couple of carbon fibre rods to insert. For this kind of thing, I go fairly modest - 4x4mm box section. Super light but very stiff. The advantage is that they don't take too much of the gluing face away and they also don't take too much of the neck wood away They should be with me Monday/Tuesday so that gives me a day or so to work out how on earth I'm going to clamp the neck / guide the router!

Good question. I tend to do the final slurry and buff a little patch at a time so I don't get one area drying while I'm still working on another area. So, say for the maple stripes at the back, I would tend to do one mahogany side first, then finish by wiping the maple with the grain to take off any red slurry, then do the other side the same way and then do the middle maple cluster. As long as it hasn't got dry and sticky - and as long as the wood is pretty smooth-sanded to start off with - then it is usually easy enough to wipe off any excess that is the 'wrong' colour.